1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument, for example wind instrument type, which is provided with playing keys and musical tone signal generating means and is capable of assigning any musical tone parameter to a continuous operator such as wheel switch, wheel assigning any musical play expression to a control means such as a foot switch or transposing the scale of a musical tone signal by an interval of a fifth at a time.
2. Description of the Prior Art
At present some electronic musical instruments have a controller which shapes the wind type instrument such as clarinet. The musical instruments are designed to control the musical tones by fingering and breath intensity control which are similar to those of the wind type instrument. Since the electronic musical instrument is designed so that the musical tone parameter is generated based on the information detected according to breath intensity and fingering and the musical tone is generated by controlling the musical tone source unit according to this musical tone parameter, it is possible to provide a free playing element (operator) which is not provided in the natural wind instrument. One example is a wheel switch which has been used until now. The wheel switch is an operator capable of outputting analog control data according to rotation angle. The existing electronic musical instruments have applied this wheel switch for pitch bend function (a control function which controls an effect to raise or lower continuously the pitch from a specified pitch).
In addition to pitch bend, there are other many musical tone parameters which could afford rich expression of musical tone by generating them based on analog data with the aid of a wheel switch. For example, it is desirable to control continuously a the tone generation effect such as vibrato from 0 level up to a maximum level.
However, as the function of the wheel switch of existing musical instruments is restricted to the pitch bend function, depth of vibrato cannot be changed. If the function of the wheel switch is fixed to adjust the vibrato function (a control function which controls a vibrato), pitch bend cannot be applied sufficiently. Accordingly, the existing electronic music instruments have a disadvantage that they cannot sufficiently express musical tones.
Some electronic musical instruments are provided with an operation means which can be operated during playing in addition to the playing keys and breath sensor so as to improve their musical expression ability. One example is a foot switch. Musical expression effects (for example, portamento and tone color change) which cannot be expressed by using only the play keys or breath sensor can be given to musical tones.
Nevertheless, since the existing musical instrument features that one function is inflexibly assigned to one operation means, many control means are required to give many musical expressions, which results in complicated play.
Usually, the electronic musical instrument has a disadvantage that since it is provided with one or two operation means mentioned above, the range of musical expression is narrow.
Usually the electronic musical instrument is tuned to C major. However, so as to ensure easy ensemble with other musical instruments and play for transposing instrument many electronic musical instruments are designed to be able to transpose. Transposition is a function to generate tones of another key (another pitch) with the same fingering. For example, if the musical instrument which is tuned usually to C major is transposed upward by 4 degrees, it can play F major by ordinary fingering.
The majority of wind instruments are transposing instruments. Therefore, when C major music is played with this type of musical instrument, actually played music may be B flat major or E flat major. Therefore so as to play this music easily with the electronic musical instrument, it is necessary to transpose its scale to the scale of a specific musical instrument. In many cases the scale of wind instruments is adjusted by increasing or decreasing the key signature .music-flat.(.music-sharp.) such as F major-B flat major-E flat major. For example, some saxophones are tuned to B flat major, but others to E flat major, some clarinets are tuned to B flat major, but others to E flat major, and some horns are tuned to F major, but others to B flat major. Thus in most cases instrument transposition is executed with a 5 degree step.
However, the conventional electronic musical instrument is designed so that transposition is executed with a semitone step. Therefore, transposition from C major to F major needs the procedure of C--C.music-sharp.--D--D.music-sharp.--E--F, which makes it impossible to transpose quickly during playing.